Operations research in the Netherlands

Abstract

Abstract.A questionnaire by telephone of 98% of the Netherlands Society for Operations Research personal membership is the basis for a description of their activities and for an extrapolation of OR/MS developments in a wide sense in a country like the Netherlands.

On the roles of OR/MS practitioners in supporting strategy

“…For many years, the practice of Operational Research/Management Science (OR/MS) and the work undertaken by practitioners have been the focus of research interest (Pappis, 1981;Tilanus, 1984;Tcha, 1991;Jeffrey and Seaton, 1995;Fildes and Ranyard, 1997;Chen and Wei, 2002). More recently, there has been an increasing interest in the work of practitioners engaged in strategic activities within organisations.…”

Failures and successes of quantitative methods in management

“…There may be biases in the distribution over problem areas, techniques emplo~yed, or sectors of economic activity. There may be bias.~s in the size dis:ribution of the firms/instituions represented, although the sizes range from the numbers 2 and 23 on the Fortta~e 1981 list of largest indu,;trial companies in the world (Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Pbilips' Gloeilampenfibrieken, respectively), down to the one-man :onsultancy firm of Knoppers There may be )iases in the atr:hors, approached through the N ;OR membership, because the NSOR membersl: ip is dominated by its 36% mathematicians and 21 ~ econometricians [39]. There certairdy are biases due to the required 50-50 proportion of failure i and successes, to the 2) A bias away from self-indictments of the authors, e.g.…”

Mathematical programming in the Netherlands

“…To identify MP users, the following means were employed: -Mialler's address list [1]: -In a questionnaire by telephone, 98 per cent of the personal membership of the Netherlands Society' of Operational Research [3] were asked if they applied MP or could name colleagues who did; -Contact persons in universities and companies were questioned: -Identified users were asked for names of other users, since MP users rarely work in isolation; -Computer and software manufacturers were approached, but these would not generally disclose their clients.…”